Sen. Casey Calls On Congress To End Sequestration

Equipment used by researchers at the Hillman Cancer Center in Pittsburgh is a direct result of NIH funding, which US Sen. Bob Casey says is in jeopardy if the sequester cuts are allowed to continue.

Credit Michael Lynch / 90.5 WESA

Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) is calling on Congress to prevent the latest round of sequester cuts that could impede medical research.

A bipartisan conference committee, created in the agreement to end the government shutdown, has until December to decide whether to keep or reduce cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Last year the Pittsburgh region received 1,132 NIH awards totaling more than $503 million. As a whole, Pennsylvania was given 3,369 grants worth more than $1.4 billion.

The commonwealth ranked fourth in federal research funding in 2012.

With the next round of sequester cuts scheduled for January, Casey said medical research can’t stand to be underfunded.

“If we can get Washington on the right track,” he said, “then the breakthroughs here, the cures, the hope that is evident here, will burn ever brightly.”

The first round of cuts, which cost the state about $70 million, led medical researchers to continue their work overseas and affected about 1,000 jobs.

If sequestration continues, the Center for American Progress estimates there will be a $1.2 billion reduction in NIH grants, resulting in the loss of 25,506 jobs nationally.

Casey said the United States could lose its “edge” if nothing is done.

“It makes no sense, sequestration,” he said. “No company, no successful company, no family, would reduce spending in the way that sequestration is reducing spending right now.”

But Casey is hopeful. He said it’s something both sides of the aisle can get behind.

“The impact of this, the benefits of it, knows no partisan bounds,” he said. “The results of research don’t just help one party versus the other. It helps everyone and it’s also a big economic priority for people in both parties.”

While Senate leaders were announcing details of a last-minute agreement Wednesday to avert a threatened Treasury default and reopen the government after 16-day partial shutdown, Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) was saying the deal is just a starting point.

Casey said he is pleased that the proposal called for the Treasury to have authority to continue borrowing through Feb. 7, and the government would be open through Jan. 15, but he would prefer that the deadline be pushed back through the end of 2014 as had been included in an earlier proposal.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would continue to fund the federal government.

Essentially this bill does three things: it temporarily keeps government operations funded through the middle of December, delays the affordable care act for a year and it repeals a tax on medical devices as part of the health care law.

Pennsylvania's Democratic U.S. Senator is warning the threatened federal government shutdown would be felt in Pennsylvania.

Sen. Bob Casey is denouncing the move by House Republicans to send to the Senate a resolution that would fund the federal government past October first, but only if the Affordable Care Act is defunded.